Which Child Immigrants Face Earnings Disparity? Age-at-immigration, Ethnic Minority Status and Labour Market Attainment in Canada.

Using Canadian Census microdata from 1990 to 2005, we investigate the earnings attainment of immigrants to Canada in 6 age-at-arrival cohorts. In comparison to past work we extend our understanding regarding three dimensions of the age at immigration debate: we explore heterogeneity across fine grained age-at-arrival cohorts, over a fifteen-year period and across different ethnic groups. We find that white immigrants and female immigrants arriving in Canada prior to age 18 face little earnings disparity. In contrast, visible minority male immigrants face significant earnings disparity regardless of their age-at-migration, and additionally this disparity increases sharply with age-at-migration. We find a break in earnings attainment at an age-of-arrival of 17, with immigrants arriving after this age performing much worse than those arriving at this age or earlier. The patterns observed are found for visible minority immigrants as a whole, and for Chinese, South Asian and African/Black origin immigrants examined separately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]